"The reticent volcano keeps" by Emily Dickinson

The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.

If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not proceed
Without a listener?

Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every prater be
The only secret neighbors keep
Is Immortality.


Source of the text - The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 631.

TJB: Magma chamber music. Praising the stoic volcano for being a secretkeeper & inverting syntax, the poet sings we too can & must keep secrets.